Economists despise information asymmetries in markets, because theoretically, "perfect" information leads to optimized pricing. That is, the price of everything reflects the highest amount people are willing to pay, so the allocation of resources best reflects the aggregate values of the market.
Today, with pervasive networks and the geometric increase in the volume of available information, we are rapidly approaching a condition of perfect market knowledge - or at least as close as we are likely to get to it. Systems collect information about everyone and every transaction, and software is evolving to crack open these giant databases and reveal the secret knowledge buried in their unfathomable depths.
One byproduct of this is a subtle trend toward discriminatory pricing, where the price of a good or service changes minute-to-minute and customer-by-customer, depending on various factors. For example, a soda vending machine might know to raise the price of a cold drink in the heat of a summer day, and drop it on a frigid morning. A retailer might recognize that one customer would be more likely to buy one item at a 40% discount, while another would respond better to a 2-for-1 special. The price for Customer A might therefore be different than for Customer B. Perhaps customers who choose to disclose personal information get a better price than those who protect their privacy - reflecting the value of the transaction data to the seller.
Discriminatory pricing reflects a growing sophistication in our understanding of value. Oscar Wilde once quipped that a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Today I suppose we are in a post-cynical age, where the price depends precisely on how much we - individually and collectively - want what is being offered. There are no bargains in such a market, and there is no such thing as luck.
The good news is, if you have treasures in your attic, you can sell them on eBay and get something close to their true market price without worrying about getting fleeced by unscrupulous pawn shop dealers. The bad news is that everyone selling a good, service or experience will know the maximum they can extract for it - if not from you, then from someone else. They won't need to rely on their faulty judgment or incorrect assumptions about the market.
The problem is that these information asymmetries created gaps in the market system that allowed both canny and unsophisticated shoppers to benefit. There is a genuine thrill to finding a precious item buried in a junkpile at the thrift shop that only you had the skill to recognize. That is a vanishing phenomenon today, and it is possible to envision its complete extinction before too long. Likewise, for years, budget travelers benefited from the flawed belief on the part of hotel-keepers that all tourists were looking for safe, full-service accommodations, and so rustic and idiosyncratic guesthouses had to charge much less than traditional hotels. As it turns out, a certain class of traveler prefers the remote and colorful. The tourism industry in Thailand and Laos knows how to read the Lonely Planet Guide as well as any Australian backpacker, and now prices have adjusted to reflect the true supply and demand. Consequently, adventure travel has become more expensive, and the opportunity to have that experience is now more limited to those with financial means.
On a macro level, the increase in market knowledge is facilitating an enormous transfer of wealth of all kinds from the naïve to the sophisticated. Both price and value of everything from tangible items such as goods or property to intangibles such as education and experiences can now be calculated with fine-grained precision. Those with the means to exploit assets to the fullest are systematically displacing owners who lack the knowledge, capital or inclination to maximize their pricing potential. Clinging to older methods and values only invites disaster at the hands of remorseless information-driven competition. Just ask the main street shop owners who try to compete with Wal-Mart.
This, of course, is how capitalism is supposed to work in theory. But since we have never had the tools at our disposal to realize the ideal, our entire social experience and appreciation for markets is based on the more quirky and forgiving "imperfect" model. We don't really know what will happen when the blinders come completely off and expose us to the harsh glare of perfected capitalism in all its value-maximizing, price-discriminating, unsentimental glory.
From a generational perspective, the full emergence of information-driven hypercapitalism in the next several years sets the stage for another great age divide, between those who remember the old ideas about privacy, anonymity in transactions, and the relative equality of rights between sophisticated and unsophisticated participants in markets, and those who have only known the new reality. There is no guarantee that they will like what they see around them. The reactions of the generation now just being born to the social conditions of the super-sophisticated marketplace represent a profound uncertainty on the 20-30 year horizon, and one of the great potential conflicts of the mid-21st century.